The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATH. 855
a fire for you in the Red Room; but if it is your will to stay here, he that
pays the lawing maun choose the lodging."
I endeavoured to engage her in conversation; but, though she answered
with a kind of stiff civility, I could get her into no freedom of discourse,
and she began to look at her wheel and at the door more than once, as if
she meditated a retreat. I was obliged, therefore, to proceed to some special
questions that might have interest for a person, whose ideas were probably
of a very bounded description.
I looked round the apartment, being the same in which I had last seen
my poor mother. The author of the family history, formerly mentioned,
had taken great credit to himself for the improvements he had made in this
same jointure-house of Duntarkin, and how, upon his marriage, when his
mother took possession of the same as her jointure-house, "to his great
charges and expenses he caused box the walls of the great parlour," (in
which I was now sitting,) "empanel the same, and plaster the roof, finishing the apartment with ane concave chimney, and decorating the same with
pictures, and a barometer and thermometer." And in particular, which his
good mother used to say she prized above all the rest, he had caused his
own portraiture be limned over the mantelpiece by a skilful hand. And,
in good faith, there he remained still,-having much the visage which I was
disposed to ascribe to him on the evidence of his handwriting, - grim and
austere, yet not without a cast of shrewdness and determination; in armour,
though he never wore it, I fancy; one hand on an open book, and one resting on the hilt of his sword, though, I dare say, his head never ached with
reading nor- his limbs with fencing.
" That picture is painted on the wood, madam?" said I.
"Ay, sir, or it's like it would not have been left there. They took a'
they could."
"Mr. Treddle's creditors, you mean?" said I.
" Na," replied she, dryly, " the creditors of another family, that sweepit
cleaner than this poor man's, because, I fancy, there was less to gather."
" An older family, perhaps, and probably more remembered and regretted
than later possessors?"
Christie here settled herself in herseat, and pulled her wheel towards
her. I had given her something interesting for her thoughts to dwell upon,
and her wheel was a mechanical accompaniment on such occasions, the
revolutions of which assisted her in the explanation of her ideas.
" Mair regretted - mair missed? -I liked ane of the auld family very
wee], but I winna say that for them a'. How should they be mair missed
than the Treddleses? The cotton mill was such a thing for the country!
The mair bairns a cottar body had the better; they would make their awn
keep frae the time they were five years auld; and a widow, wi' three or four
bairns, was a wealthy woman in the time of the Treddleses."
" But the health of these poor children, my good friend-their education
and religious instruction — "
"For health," said Christie, looking gloomily at me, "ye maun ken little
of the warld, sir, if ye dinna ken that the health of the poor man's body, as
weel as his youth and his strength, are all at the command of the rich man's
purse. There never was a trade so unhealthy yet, but men would fight to
get wark at it for twa pennies a-day aboon the common wage. But the
bairns were reasonably weel cared for, in the way of air and exercise, and
a very responsible youth heard them their carritch, and gied them lessons
in Reediemadeasy.* Now, what did they ever get before? Maybe on a
winter day they wad be called out to beat the wood for cocks or sicklike,
and then the starving weans would maybe get a bite of broken bread and
maybe no, just as the butler was in humour-that was a' they got."
* " Reading made Easy," usually so pronounced in Scotland.